Jansy Mello comments C.Kunin's "I just heard a funny story about Beethoven and his sixth symphony ("The Pastoral") that reminded me of our VN in regards to artistic misdirection ...The first movement of the Pastoral ends with a short passage that clearly depicts a duet between a cuckoo played by a clarinet and a warbler of some kind played by the flute. According to Alan Chapman, the host of a morning program on KUSC (kusc.org/playlist/), when asked which bird he had in mind when he wrote the flute part, LvB insisted that he was not referring to birds at all. Anyone with ears would know he was lying, but according to Mr Chapman, Beethoven had himself actually marked the passage in the score with the pseudo-English word 'boids'. "

It's a charming and funny story about Beethoven's 'birds,' artistic misdirections and imitation (although in this case the right word eludes me: would they be considered "musical transpostions"?) It fits in with our present discussion about take-offs, rip-offs and the additional theme of the "parodies." Consequently, C.Kunin's second, apparently unrelated posting, about "Shade is always 'Mr' and Kinbote is always 'Dr.' ," inviting A.S to "come up with an instance in which Shade is 'Dr' and/or one in which Kinbote is 'Mr' - for, in this case, he'd "have gotten me and I shall have to throw myself under a bus or something" - warmed me up to her theories concerning R.L.Stevenson's story. If we slightly change our perspective we may accept the idea that, instead of merely reproducing a pattern in order to point to R.S.Stevenson's J&H (with the doctor/monster split personalities), Nabokov might have entertained second thoughts about his original plot and then he settled for parodying the metamorphosis engendered by R.L.S's "scientific" potions.

I've just begun reading Thomas Karshan's introduction to his edition of V.Nabokov's "Selected Poems," where he writes: "...Pale Fire, in which Nabokov establishes an apparently absolute contrast between his two protagonists - the unhappy, errant Russian exile Kinbote, and John Shade, the sunny New England poet...only to undermine it by indicating a series of affinities so intricate that it many readers have been led to believe that Shade and Kinbote are two opposite facets of the same person."(2012,xxii).

When Nabokov initially mentioned his new novel (in "Selected Letters"), he hadn't yet effectuated the division between Shade and Kinbote (their traits belonged to one single charater, a mad ex-king in exile). Later on (cf. "Selected Letters"), he attempted to get Shade's poem published independently, even before he'd finished writing CK's commentary. At this point the idea of organizing elements to form an additional parody to RLS J&H, might have provided an almost irresistible appeal to Nabokov's fine sense of humor concerning the pseudo-psychanalytic theories concerning split personalities then in vogue [?]* The differentiating emphasis related to "dr' and "mr" wouldn't have demanded a lot of alterations to the already existing structure...